1st Cinnamon. 2nd Mate just because the possibility to use some applets that don't exist, yet, on Cinnamon. in particular the one that allow me to change characters when typing in Spanish (my mother tongue). Ah! also the eyes that follow your cursor {why nobody do those for Cinnamon?)

I haven't tried MATE in a long while, but Cinnamon is very fast in 14. I'll have to give MATE a fresh look.

jamesbannon wrote:I switched to MATE to see what it was like. So far, so good. Very traditional and stable. No more oddities like randomly losing permissions to shut down, mount disks, etc. It's fast too, compared with Cinnamon, GNOME Shell, etc.

I use Cinnamon on Ubuntu 12.04 and it literally transformed the whole distro. I don't like Unity very much, although I don't hate it as much as most people do. I've tried many other DEs on Ubuntu and I always go back to Cinnamon. The only reason why I haven't installed Mint is because I've already got this OS tweaked to my liking and I don't want to start over again, plus I've run both the MATE and Cinnamon versions of Mint on a VM and I've had issues with proxy settings that I don't get on Ubuntu. MATE is nice, though, and fast.

At home I have an old Dell netbook running LXDE (Lubuntu) and it works very well in that environment. I tried it on my work PC but I don't like how it handles dual monitors - i.e. not at all.

Although it has some bugs - which is understandable considering its youth - Cinnamon is the future of the Linux desktop.

I don't know how to change the default file manager though - the one that is opened by folder launchers on a Mate panel. I have been using Nautilus 3.4, which registered itself as the default file manager when I installed Cinnamon on the side.I know how to change the file manager that draws the desktop icons, it's a separate setting and is in dconf-editor. Or was it gconf-editor. I can't find the setting anymore actually.

I think Nemo can well become Mate's default file manager, as it's not stagnating and looks good (even Nautilus looks good but Nemo has a much better toolbar). Unless you consider there are too many dependencies.I'd use Caja, but the gtk3 remakes look much better to me and with Nemo there's no compromise

I just returned to mint today and installed 14 cinnamon. Not any love here for gnome since 3 shell showed up on the scene and 2 was discontinued. I went back to debian sid for awhile, but I'm no big fan of their no branding all software free philosophy. I switched to opensuse factory and ran kde until it updated to 12.3 m2 and kde rc1. At that point screenlocker had become a nightmare. I decided the best solution for now was to come back to Mint and run cinnamon. At least I can get it closed to gnome 2 behavior. so I will run this for awhile and make sure I to figure ouit the stuff my wife will have me adjust to her liking, as she has the same laptop as me. The I will switch mine over to lmde.

cavedweller wrote:I just returned to mint today and installed 14 cinnamon. Not any love here for gnome since 3 shell showed up on the scene and 2 was discontinued. I went back to debian sid for awhile, but I'm no big fan of their no branding all software free philosophy. I switched to opensuse factory and ran kde until it updated to 12.3 m2 and kde rc1. At that point screenlocker had become a nightmare. I decided the best solution for now was to come back to Mint and run cinnamon. At least I can get it closed to gnome 2 behavior. so I will run this for awhile and make sure I to figure ouit the stuff my wife will have me adjust to her liking, as she has the same laptop as me. The I will switch mine over to lmde.

Mate is closer to Gnome2 than Cinnamon is... Just sayin'

-Dave

“The only way to fix Linux is to take one distro, one set of components as a baseline, abandon everything else and everyone should just contribute to this single Linux..."

I realize Mate is closer to Gnome 2. I also see the Cinnamon as the ability to make the new more palitable and usable. It still has some kinks, but it is workable. I'm also taking into consideration that my wife and I are using the same acre laptops which do not have num lock cap lock indicators. So the cinnamon applet for that purpose come in handy. Anything to make it easier for my wife is the goal. She doesn't want to use windows and loves linux, but when there is an issue my ears get a workout.

Played around with just about all DE out there and eventually settled(some months ago) for XFCE(various reasons including it being less of a ressorce hog and its reliability/simplicity &no bloat approach) nowadays since XFCE for LMDE is going to be discontinued i began re-experimenting with both mate and cinnamon , both are fine DEs but for me mate seems to fit better(much less cpu hungry then cinnamon and less loaded with unnecessary stuf, plus since my first contact with a linux OS was on a gnome 2 environment i'm feeling more 'at home' in mate)One thing i'm sure of DE's will appear, change ,evolve for better/worse and inevitably die off so without a doubt ill see my fair share' of switches in the future; the one thing i'm sure of is me sticking out with the debian rolling wagon, no other distros i've tried based on other approaches have even come close to offering me both the ease of use and stability in conjunction with the opportunity of steadily assimilating OS and net related info in a controlled and relatively safe environment. So far LMDE and its mint forums are providing me with plenty of usefull stuff to learn and are filled with both people and links that can guide towards just about anything that sparks my interest enough to make me seek additional info.

Forget gnome3 and unity - those are designed by linux geeks who want linux to ONLY be used by the geek population. Elitists. It is scandalous, and disgusting to me. Canonical used to be on what I think is the right track - make linux easy enough for everycomputerman. But, they have been drifting, slowly, into geekland territory, and with Unity and 12.04, they are firmly placed inside the borders of elitist geekland. Sad, if you ask me.

Gnome 3 is worse. They are so far off the edge they are freezing - and the user numbers confirm it. 100 times worse self-inflicted damage then kde did when they went to 4. Kde seems to have recovered, although I am sceptical. I don't think gnome can recover so easily from this, if they ever do.

I've been using MATE now for a few months. I was using Ubuntu back at around version 5.04 IIRC with GNOME and that's what I really had a lot of Linux exposure to. I then started upgraded as new ones came out, and by the time the whole Gnome 2 to Unity switch came about I had been toying with going back to Windows. I switched to Windows 7 for a few years then now with the advent of Windows 8 I have switched back to the Linux world.

I'm so glad to see Linux Mint has the MATE DE because it brings back good memories. Runs very well on my hardware. I love having options

I have played with KDE, XFCE, LXDE and some of the other lesser known ones, but have always felt at home with Gnome 2/MATE.

It had to be MATE since I'm running Gnome 2 desktops on my other two boxes: OpenSolaris at work (to be upgraded to Solaris 11) and Fedora 13 on my secondary home box. I was also running OpenSolaris on the older box that I just replaced with this running Mint. Except for the one big Menu (which I don't use much anyway after the first days of setting things up) and some new applets, it's just like the others and I avoid getting confused.

I don't care at all about what icons might be on the desktops since I always have the space covered with active windows. If you ask me what Icons I have I wouldn't even be able to tell.

Xfce has been my favorite since the first time I tried it, way back in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon.

I also liked GNOME2 (who didn't?), so naturally I like MATE.

I use LXDE on my netbook and legacy machines and am very happy with it. It's much lighter than Xfce but so much more refined than Fluxbox or other light environments or window managers.

I tolerate KDE but I always seem to have head aches with it on Linux. It is much better on PC-BSD in terms of not crashing or otherwise screwing up, but now that the aforementioned OS has better support for other DEs I don't have to bother with it anymore.

Still haven't spent much time with Cinnamon and hate Unity and GNOME3 with a passion.

I must say that coming from a Windows background, mainly XP, server2k3, and 7, using linux at all seemed like a tough sell when I was younger. But now that I've had the opportunity to use a few different operating systems outside of windows and osx, I am more comfortable using linux all-around and feel like its kind of the best of both worlds for most things. Cinnamon reflects a familiar feel to windows with a menu/start button and app launcher that I've used for years, plus some tweaks.

I don't think I ever really liked Unity when I ran Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on my laptop. It was okay but I preferred using the osx-like Docky instead or using a 2D version of Gnome to launch my apps. As long as Cinnamon sticks around, I'll be happy. I like how linux gives us the opportunity to choose which DE we want to use, but at the same time, wouldn't it sometimes be better if we all rallied behind one option and stuck with it? I have not tried using xfce or lxde so I can't speak to those but I know many folks like them.